Gary, you've mentioned how chopping would let me "double my herd size on the same number of acres"....  You obviously have way more experience with cattle than I do. I would really like to know more about your thinking on this.  For starters, here is my current plan and numbers.

My goal is to get to around 50 +/- spring calving brood cows, giving me around 50 calves/year to process, keep as replacements or sell as feeders. 50 calves per year will produce ROI and cash flow and is a physically manageable number for one person (me) to handle, with proper setup, from what I can see.

I don't know if I will get to 1200 lb but if I use a 1400 lb average cow size x 50 cows x 2.5% dry of cow weight/day hay x 180 days typical winter feeding period in SW WI, that means I will need 315,000 lb of hay etc per winter at full strength. I don't know that it matters whether it is baleage or chopped does it? I need somewhere around 315,000 lb of something to feed 50 cows over the winter. Some folks say just graze all winter but that is not feasible in this climate.

My wrapped bales are around 1200 lb 5x5 ft rather the the 1500 lb 5x6 ft dry bales, so if I use an average bale weight of 1300 lb, 315k/1.3k = 242 bales/per year.  Based on my 2013 experience with relying solely on purchased hay when hay prices soared due to 2012 drought, I want to be able to produce most if not all of that feed myself, otherwise I have no control over my COGS. I need to produce this 315k lb over the summer while providing rotational grazing for 50 cows and calves.

315k lb = approx 158 tons. If corn silage yields 8 t/a dry matter, that means I need about 20 acres to provide that wt in corn silage alone.  I'm thinking with baleage maybe 30 acres of good baleage will give me 158 tons.  I've done dry hay, I've done bagged corn silage, I've done grazing corn, I've done wrapped clover/grass and alfalfa/grass mix, now this triticale/pea mix...  It will probably be some combination of all of these but I think, in most years, I can raise all of my target herd size winter (180 days) feed needs on 30-35 acres in my climate, soils and system.

For the grazing 180 days/year, with rotational grazing and adding things like turnips (lots of tons!) for grazing, I think I can intensively rotationally graze 50 May-calving cow/calf pairs on maybe another 40-50 acres. I would rotate most acres between rotational grazing and winter feed production.  At least that's my goal.

I would appreciate your feedback on these numbers and a further explanation of how silage chopping (which I've hired done) would double my production.  I do see it all comes down to tons of feed/acre and bagged corn silage is about the max tons per acre.  However bagged corn silage can only be at most a small portion of the feed needs for over-wintering bred brood cows. These are not feeders. 

Why/how would chopping this trit/pea mix above produce any more feed than wrapping it for baleage when compared at the same moisture level?

I appreciate your replies and input.